Rothschildia overwintering

[Crake]

Hi everyone, Hope the holidays are going well.

I’ve got a batch of rothschildia cincta cocoons at 42*F in the refrigerator and am unsure if this is suitable for them. Is 42*F too cold?

[kevinkk]

I kept cincta one season, I seem to recall keeping them in the fridge, that's probably about as cold as you want to go, I keep my fridge a little
warmer, and could probably use a dorm fridge so I could keep the milk colder.
When it's time to set them out- I hung the cocoons, and it should be fairly easy, and kept them in a high humidity cage, at room(my room 74f)
temperature. they all emerged pretty much together.
They paired up easily enough as well, I personally experienced some issues with fertility, but others with the same stock didn't-
Some of our southwestern stock has some funky overwintering requirements that a person does want to be aware of so they don't freeze,
it's just one of those things if you want to continue, I like being able to pop everything in cold storage and take them out when it's time,
but it's not always possible. I've had to winter Saturnia waltoreum outdoors in a cage and I didn't like it at all, no issues, but it was something new.

[evra]

I’ve reared hundreds of cincta from wild stock that I collected. I usually keep them outside in the winter where it gets to about 35 at night, without problems. The strange thing about R. cincta is that only about half of the cocoons emerge the next year, the other half continue to hold over. This pattern persists for up to 5 years. The interesting thing is that for the ones that hold over for more than a year usually are quite red.

[Crake]

Thanks kevinkk and evra for the helpful information. I think I'll just keep them in the fridge until summer. This species does seem to like warmth and I (now, after atlas) know better than to attempt "warm" species during the cold winters here.

[kevinkk]

Dec 13, 2021 13:16:56 GMT -8 Crake said:

Thanks kevinkk and evra for the helpful information. I think I'll just keep them in the fridge until summer. This species does seem to like warmth and I (now, after atlas) know better than to attempt "warm" species during the cold winters here.

I think when it comes to "warmth", it's often an issue with larva, I have had issues with supposedly easy species rearing outdoors here at the Oregon
coast, I did rear cincta outdoors, and the results were poor, one out of perhaps a dozen spun a cocoon, sleeved on cherry. Antherina suraka has been
another outdoor disaster. Obviously, indoors is a different animal and you can control just about everything.

[jwa121]

I obtained eggs of Rothschildia cincta from Arizona and reared the resulting cincta larvae on Prunus serotina during the summer of 2019. In the summer of 2020, only one moth emerged (a female). The cincta cocoons overwintered again and the moths finally emerged in the summer of 2021. One cocoon continues to diapause. I’m assuming it will produce a moth in the summer of 2022.

I kept my overwintering cincta cocoons dry and cool, but not in the fridge. If I had overwintered the cincta cocoons at a colder temperature, perhaps more than just one moth would have emerged in the summer of 2020.

[kevinkk]

Dec 18, 2021 11:42:37 GMT -8 jwa121 said:

I obtained eggs of Rothschildia cincta from Arizona and reared the resulting cincta larvae on Prunus serotina during the summer of 2019. In the summer of 2020, only one moth emerged (a female). The cincta cocoons overwintered again and the moths finally emerged in the summer of 2021. One cocoon continues to diapause. I’m assuming it will produce a moth in the summer of 2022.

I kept my overwintering cincta cocoons dry and cool, but not in the fridge. If I had overwintered the cincta cocoons at a colder temperature, perhaps more than just one moth would have emerged in the summer of 2020.

Maybe. I think my success getting all my cincta to emerge together was the high humidity I used, I used a fogger and one of those tiny plug in
wall heaters in a large- 18" x 18" x 24" box made out of clear plastic panels. That's just my opinion, and success one time isn't a precedent
necessarily. These species that are effected by rainy seasons as much as other conditions can be a problem for those of us used to more
northern species. That goes for USA species as well as exotics, at least that's been my experience with African moths and other tropicals.

[jwa121]

In the course of rearing tropical Saturniidae, I often need to heat the interior of one or two large, plastic, storage totes. To warm the air in a tote, I use a tubular glass tropical fish heater immersed in a heavy, glass milk bottle filled with water. (Each fish heater has a built-in, on-and-off thermostat control.) I wrap the exterior of the tote with bubble plastic and drape a towel over it as well to keep in the warmth.

I like your idea of using a tiny, plug-in wall heater. But can such a heater be run on an extension cord? Or does it have to be plugged directly into a wall outlet?

[kevinkk]

It plugs into the wall. The way I used it in the cage was to attach one of those electrical strips on the inside of the cage and plug the heater
into that, so I effectively had electricity in the cage. The heater itself is small, it's called a "handy heater" and the size of a big sandwich.
A fish heater is a good idea, I had to keep an eye on my setup to prevent mold and the heater didn't have as much control as I'd have liked, but,
then it wasn't made for what I was doing with it.